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Wednesday, January 16, 2013

2012 Year End: The Top 10 Best Actress Performances of 2012

Many people complained this year that the Best Actress category was weak
– but while I will admit it is not quite as strong as some years, there was
still a hell of lot of good performances this year. Part of the problem is what some people define as an "Oscar role"

Runners-Up: Halle Berry
in Cloud Atlas navigated some tricky multiple roles – my favorite
being her 1970s era journalist in this ambitious film. Gina Carano in Haywire kicked major ass – not sure she can do
anything else, but she was perfect for Soderbergh’s underrated action film. Lola Creton in Goodbye First Love is a
young French beauty, who was wonderful as a teenager who cannot see her first
love clearly. Kara Hayward in Moonrise
Kingdom perfectly fit into Wes Anderson’s world as a screwed up young woman
who finds the perfect screwed young man for herself. Keira Knightley in Anna Karenina may not have delivered the
knockout performance many expected, but she’s still damn good as Tolstoy’s
tragic heroine. Jennifer Lawrence in The
Hunger Games carried one of the year’s biggest blockbusters with grace,
style and toughness. Nadezhda Markina in
Elena was a remarkably quiet, subtle performance of a woman who gets out of
one bad situation by getting herself into a worse one without even knowing it. Leslie Mann in This is 40 pretty much
carries her husband’s movie, and keeps it from flying off the rails with her
wonderful, funny, sympathic performance. Robin
McLeavy in The Loved Ones is one of the most screwed up female horror movie
villains since Carrie. Stephanie Sigman
in Miss Bala had a near impossible role that required her to hit many
different notes, often in the same scene.Alicia Vikander in A Royal Affair had a breakout
year, and was heartbreaking sympathetic in this Danish film.Naomi Watts in The Impossible was better than the movie itself, as a woman struggling to survive, and
keep her family together. Rachel Weisz
in The Deep Blue Sea was heartbreaking as a woman who sacrifices everything
– she made this almost suffocating film good. Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Smashed elevated a fairly standard issue
story about an alcoholic with her terrific performance. Deannie Yip in A Simple Life is subtle and heartbreaking in the
appropriately in this deceptively simple film.

Top Ten

10. Dreama Walker in Compliance

There is no
doubt that Ann Dowd steals Compliance with her supporting performance as the
fast food manager who allows Dreama Walker to be abused. But in all the praise
that Dowd has received, it has rarely been mentioned just how good Dreama
Walker is – and how complicated her role is. After all, she goes from a
care-free young woman, just working her dead-end job, to trying to defend
herself against criminal allegations, strip searched, humiliated and eventually
sexually assaulted. And at every stage of the process, the audience has to
understand just why Walker is allowing herself to be abused like this. It is a
tricky, complicated role and performance, where Walker has to do all sorts of
projection with only her facial expressions. Ann Dowd deserves all the praise
(and more) she is receiving for Compliance. But Dreama Walker deserves some as
well.

9. Juno Temple in Killer Joe

The one
thing the rest of the characters in Killer Joe agree one is that Temple’s poor,
little Dottie is “a little slow”, and coming from this group of idiots, that
means something. When the movie begins, we cannot help but agree with their
assessment – Dottie, while in the body of a (nearly) grown woman, does seem to
have the mentality of a child. And yet, she doesn’t miss anything – she
overhears everything, and understands it, and also understands what is expected
from her, and that everyone thinks she’s “a little slow”, which helps her
manipulate everyone around her from scene to scene. By the end of the movie,
she’s getting ready to do the only smart thing anyone in the movie has done up
to that point. Temple has quietly being doing good work (mainly in England) for
a few years now, but Killer Joe should be her breakthrough role – the only none
American in the cast, fits right in with this trailer trash, and outdoes most
of them. Her scenes with McConaghey are the creepy heart of the film.

8. Zoe Kazan in Ruby Sparks

When I look
at the films of 2012, one of the biggest mysteries to me is why Ruby Sparks
didn’t catch on more with audiences. This is a smart, funny, perceptive comedy
from the directors of Little Miss Sunshine, and a great, witty screenplay by
star Zoe Kazan, who wrote herself a wonderful role. She plays the title
character – the invention of Paul Dano’s lonely novelist, who writes himself
the perfect girlfriend, and then is amazed when she materializes out of thin
air. Through the course of the movie, Kazan has to hit pretty much every note
there is, as every time Dano thinks of something he’d like to change about Ruby
– poof – it happens just like that. She goes from uncomplicated, “cool girl” –
every guy’s fantasy of the quirky, cute, sexual girl who “understands me”, into
all sorts of iterations, before finally becoming a real person. This role
should have made Zoe Kazan a star – and an in demand screenwriter to boot.

7. Marion Cotillard in Rust and Bone

The
interesting thing about Marion Cotillard’s performance in Rust and Bone is how
internal it is. While many actors faced with playing this type of role – an
active, able bodied woman, who has an accident which costs her both her legs
above the knee – would rage outwards, expressing their anger in big motions,
Cotillard does just the opposite. Sure, she snaps once or twice, but mainly she
keeps all her anger and pain on the inside – she doesn’t want anyone she used
to know around her, she wants to feel the same way she used to feel when men
looked at with lust instead of with pity. She is a wounded character trying to
figure out where to go now. In Matthias Schoenarts, she has a perfect scene
partner – another wounded character, who doesn’t like to outwardly show
everything – and between these two wounded characters, somehow they find some
sort of peace. Cotillard has become a favorite of mine in recent years, and
this is one of her finest performances.

6. Nina Hoss in Barbara

Nina Hoss’
performance in Barbara is one of the quietest great performances of the year.
As a doctor in 1980s East Germany she is, for reasons we can guess at but are
not explained, banished to a small country hospital. From the moment she
arrives, all she wants to do is leave. She is cold and even hostile towards her
new co-workers, but gradually she warms up to her new community. By its very
nature, Hoss cannot reveal too much of her true intentions – you never know who
you can trust, and the Stasi are already harassing her. But throughout the
movie, Hoss projects toughness, vulnerability, sexuality and warmth, all with
very little external movement. After years of solid work in Germany, Hoss is
ready for her American breakout – perhaps in next year’s A Most Wanted Man. But
for now, her work in Barbara is truly great.

5. Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild

Most child actors and
actresses are artificial – they either try to act too cute or too adult, and
they never quite capture real children on screen. But Quvenzhane Wallis’
performance in Beasts of the Southern Wild is an exception. She is a natural,
and she carries this difficult, complex movie on her shoulders. The film is a
mixture of dark reality and fantasy elements, told from her not quite
understanding point-of-view. Her character has had to mature beyond her years,
because of an absent mother, and not-all there father, and yet she retains that
sense of childhood wonder. When you’re dealing with a performance by an actress
as young as Wallis (6), you’re never quite sure if she deserves all the credit,
or whether it should go to the director (Benh Zeitlin) for drawing the
performance out of his pint sized star. Either way, Wallis delivered one of the
most memorable performances of the year.

4. Michelle Williams in Take This Waltz

Michelle
Williams turns what could have been one of the least sympathetic characters of
the year into one of the one of the most sympathetic. Sarah Polley’s Take This
Waltz is about a marriage slowly coming to an end – something Williams played
in the much harsher Blue Valentine a few years ago. Williams plays the wife who
after years with her nice guy husband (Seth Rogen) has grown restless and bored
– she wants more passion, and may just find that in their handsome new
neighbor. Watching Williams in this movie as she goes back and forth in her
mind between these two men is to watch one of the best actresses of her
generation at the top of her game. What her character does is reckless and
selfish – she loses more than she gains – but at least she makes her own
decisions. It would have been easy to either make this character into a
heartless bitch, or worse, one of those “How Stella Got Her Groove Back”
shallow, sexist characters, but Williams goes deeper than that, and comes up
with the real person underneath. She almost single handedly makes Sarah Polley’s
film one of the more interesting ones of the year.

3. Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook

2012 was
the year Jennifer Lawrence became a star with The Hunger Games, and proved
herself to be a deft comedian in this wonderfully witty performance. As Tiffany,
the dream girl for Bradley Cooper’s mentally ill lead character, Lawrence hit
all the right notes. She has issues of her own – and says whatever is on her
mind at all times. She and Cooper have a real chemistry together (it makes you
forget all about the age difference that is never addressed in the movie), and
Lawrence’s comic timing is superb throughout. Her single best scene is when she
dresses down Robert De Niro with the facts of how she is not responsible for
the Eagles lost juju. Some of the complaints about her character being a
fantasy are not without merit, yet Lawrence is so good at playing this role,
you forget all about it. Lawrence is finally the movie star she deserves to be.

2. Emmanuelle Riva in Amour

I seem to be in the minority who thinks that the best performance in
Amour is by Jean-Louis
Trintignant, as the husband, because he has much more complex emotional terrain
to act. Yet that does not detract for a second just how brilliant Emmanuelle
Riva is in Michael Haneke’s sad masterpiece. She plays a woman who has a
stroke, and slowly but surely withers away into nothing – both physically and
emotionally. As someone who watched a similar process happen to his own
grandmother, Riva’s performance impressed me with just how accurate it is, and
even when her mind starts to go, you never stop feeling sympathy for her as she
withers away. Yes, I think the real star of the movie is Trintignant, who has
sadly been mostly overlooked this awards season, but he wouldn’t be nearly as
great without Riva’s powerful emotional and physical performance to play off
of. Truly a performance for the ages.

1. Jessica Chastain in
Zero Dark Thirty

Jessica Chastain’s Maya is one of the most interesting characters of the
year. She is a woman who becomes obsessed with tracking down Osama Bin Laden,
no matter what it costs – either herself personally (since she has no personal
life) nor really her country in terms of its moral authority. Chastain is
brilliant throughout the movie, with many highlight scenes -the dinner with
Ehle where she explains “I’m not the girl who fucks”, the meeting when she
responds to the question of who she is by saying “I’m the motherfucker who
found this place…sir” – or the moment when Gandolfini asks her what else she’s
done in the last 10 years “I’ve done nothing else” are all brilliant moments,
and shows how her job has turned into an obsession, and how simuntaneously
driven and lonely she is. Maya is certainly a new breed of female hero – smart
and tough as any man, but also as flawed. But when I think of her greatest
moments in this performance, they are quiet ones – right near the beginning
when she tries to hide her shock at the detainee’s treatment, and near the end,
when she tries to hide the emotions of what has just happened, and realizes
what it is they just did. Chastain’s Maya is certainly a hero – but not an
uncomplicated one, or even one that has not become morally compromised.

About Me

I am an accountant, living in Brantford, ON - and although I am married and have beautiful daughter, I still find time to watch a lot of movies. This blog is mostly reviews of new movies - with other musing thrown in as well.